Back to the Past

In the darkness, someone spoke.

"It's so cold. Huh? There's a child here."

"Oh, he's dressed pretty well. Doesn't look like a beggar. How did he faint here?"

Hands groped and pinched at him.

"What are you doing, Number Nine? Don't tell me you're a pedophile?"

"Whatever the case, Number Seven, this kid's bones aren't bad. We need to find one anyway. Rather than let him die here and go to waste, we might as well take him back."

More groping and pinching.

"He's a little lacking, but it's fine to take him back. He looks like he's about to starve to death anyway. Pick him up and let's go."

"Okay."

What did that mean?

What did that mean?

What did they mean...

Suddenly, he opened his eyes.

Honed over many years, his sharp instincts made his gaze fall first upon the gun at the man's waist. As the man bent down, his hand shot out and snatched the gun.

For an instant, all three of them froze.

The child on the ground gripped the pistol with both hands. The man bending over instinctively raised his hands, while the other man in black instinctively reached for his gun. The killing intent that erupted in that instant nearly made them think they had walked into an ambush. But in the next moment, the two men exchanged startled looks and smiled uncertainly.

The child lying on the ground was simply too young and too frail-looking. The safety was still on, and even reaching the trigger with his finger seemed difficult.

"Oh, Number Nine, your first lost-gun record goes to this kid. Hahaha."

"Still... what sharp reflexes. Just like a wild beast. He must have no sense of security at all. We've found treasure."

"Hey, kid, that's not how you hold a gun..."

Before Number Seven could finish, a fierce glint flashed through the child's eyes. The instant his finger flipped off the safety, the gun fired.

With a bang, the bullet passed through Number Nine's chest, blood spraying from his back. The recoil threw the child's hands backward. Number Seven had already drawn his gun on reflex, but as he aimed at the child, disbelief still filled his heart.

It couldn't have been this child. Who was ambushing us...

That thought caused him a brief moment of hesitation. Then gunshots rang out at the same time. A bloody hole opened between Number Seven's brows, and he fell backward. The child, meanwhile, had been shot in the right shoulder, blood instantly soaking half his body. Trembling in the pool of blood, he actually struggled to crawl to his feet.

He had been shot in the same place as not long ago, but this time... why did it hurt so much...

Yet pain was not his greatest problem. The greatest problem was where he was, and...

"Such small hands..."

Staring at the left hand holding the gun, he murmured to himself. These were clearly a child's hands, and his height had obviously shrunk to that of a dwarf.

The night wind swept over him, bitingly cold. Looking around, he found himself on the street of some rather backward town, surrounded by extremely old-fashioned buildings and dim yellow streetlamps. He could feel the energy draining from his body. With such a frail body, he would probably be dead before long...

The scenes from before returned to his mind, along with Fire Phoenix's words: "Then you will have a chance at freedom."

A chance at freedom...

There were too many things he had no time to sort through. In the distance, sirens wailed closer. Out of habit, he wiped his fingerprints from the pistol and returned it to Number Nine's hand. Clutching his shoulder, he took a few steps forward, and then the entire world began to spin...

In the haze, memories resurfaced.

In truth, his memories of himself began at the age of ten, because Peiluojia generally began training assassins when they were ten. He had neither memories nor clues concerning anything before that.

Later, he naturally learned that whenever Peiluojia brought in a child, they would erase the child's previous memories. If that brainwashing had been undone at the time, it might have been possible to recover some memories. But by the time he learned the truth, it no longer meant much. It merely strengthened his determination to defect.

From the age of ten onward, he watched animals slaughter one another every day. Between those sessions, they taught him the basic knowledge an assassin needed. Then, beginning with knives, they made him fight certain animals to the death. Those who failed were eliminated. After that came competition among themselves. He had never been the most outstanding of them, yet he somehow survived in the end. It truly was a miracle. Of course, perhaps his future betrayal had been destined even then, because his heart had never known peace.

He had not touched that memory in a long time, yet at this moment it surfaced with startling clarity: the struggling girl in the darkness, her slightly pudgy face...

"Please, don't kill me. Please, don't kill me..."

Abruptly, he opened his eyes.

He instinctively reached for his waist. Pain immediately shot through his right hand, and then he held out his left hand and examined it again and again.

"I really became a child..."

Reaching toward his waist, he found that the scar he had kept out of a moment of softness was gone. It had been the first time he killed someone, and the first time he was injured. Now, even that scar had disappeared.

He looked around. This was an extremely old-fashioned hospital room by his standards. It was probably close to evening. Outside the window, the setting sun glowed crimson, and every building in sight was old-fashioned. On the white wall not far away hung a tear-off calendar, its pages still fresh: November 3, 1991.

He was not overly surprised. He merely frowned, then revealed a faint smile. Moments later, that smile gradually widened. His lips stayed pressed together, but his whole body shook with laughter.

Freedom, rebirth...

At this moment, he truly felt them.

Now that he thought about it, the time when his memories began had also been November 1991. That was when Peiluojia's training had just begun. Number Seven and Number Nine, the two people from that night, must have been the assassins who delivered him to Peiluojia. In his previous life, he had known nothing at all, but in this life, his early awakening had changed everything.

His shoulder was still wrapped in bandages, throbbing faintly with pain, but to him now, that was nothing. He struggled to open the cabinet beside the hospital bed, trying to find something that could confirm his current identity. But there were only two sets of clothes, an insulated lunchbox, and several pieces of fruit inside. After thinking for a moment, he crawled to the foot of the bed. Sure enough, an information card hung there.

Gu Jiaming.

Such a proper, ordinary name. A smile tugged at his lips.

But no matter what, he finally had a name of his own, and a faint warmth rose in his heart. Just as he was indulging in sentimentality, the hospital room door creaked open. The person who entered was a girl carrying a schoolbag, with two braids and a delicate oval face. She was very cute.

"Ah? Jiaming, you're awake?" The girl saw him and immediately smiled as she rushed to the bedside, setting down her schoolbag. He instinctively wrapped the blanket around his naked body. Then the girl reached out to touch him. Fortunately, she only lightly touched the bandage. "Does it still hurt? Are you better? Oh, wait here. I'll go get the nurse."

As she spoke, she ran out of the room like the wind. The child on the bed smiled faintly, his gaze falling on the girl's large schoolbag.

Four large words had been stitched onto it in red thread: Red Star School.

Below them were three more characters, which must have been the girl's name: Ye Lingjing.